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As an aside, it's extraordinary the way some Word books say different things about the same features -- I'm thinking about templates. And I'm talking about good books : Special Edition Using Word 2003, Special Edition using Office 2003, Word 2003 Bible, Word 2003 Inside Out... Word 2003 for Dummies even contradicts itself on the subject in two different places.

Thank you. Your site is an absolutely terrific resource, it helped me understand things that are explained nowhere else (certainly not in books), and it's among the topmost sources I've referenced for my own use.

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What differences are you seeing?

They relate to where elements are stored (document / attached template / normal.dot / global templates), and whether it's possible or impossible to store them there, versus recommended or discouraged.

Different authors have different versions. The whole picture is so complex that I resorted to writing my own user manual for my own use.

The inside contradiction I was referring to is in Word 2003 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, by Doug Lowe, Wiley, 2004. In Working with Templates (p.47) , he says :

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Macros are always stored in a template, so any macros you create
or modify are stored in the template, not in the document itself.

And in Where Do All the Macros Go (p. 671), he says :

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You can store macros in documents or in templates. When you create a
macro, you have three choices for where to store the macro:
✦ The current document
✦ The template thatís attached to the current document
✦ The Normal.dot template

Mind you, I'm not lambasting these guys. They worked against a schedule over an incredibly complex program (the development of which was probably not even finished at that time). And there's no way I could be using Word properly without those books.

In my opinion, the best place for macros is in templates other than normal.dotm. Either the document template or another global template. You cannot record to a global template, but you can move macros once you have them recorded or written. Generally, anything I depend on is in another template.